Thursday

Day 26

Well I am glad to report Don (my powerleveler) is still busy grinding away. I checked this afternoon and he has moved to Winterspring now and is level 56. As it happened I had my ‘home’ set to Everlook in Winterspring so I decided to jump onboard my Felsteed and go looking for him.

I’d recently done a lot of grinding around the Winterspring area so I knew the spots fairly well, I keep it set as my home on my Warlock so I can easily fill up on Soul Shards from time to time! Anyway, after about only 5 mins of trotting around I saw a fresh corpse in the distance, I hovered my mouse over it and what do you know! – It’s my character, dead! – on the ground in front of me

After about 30 seconds he appeared before my very eyes. I pulled back and observed him for a while, his movements were kind of bot like at first, he was killing mobs at the same level or +/- one level. He took some hits from this and after killing the mob and looting it he just stopped. I watched him stood still, waiting for his health to fill up and then he would move on again. This sequence was repeated at almost every kill.

I soon came to the conclusion he had no food or bandages. I decided to split off a few of my food items and open a trade with him. Now I know for sure one of the tell tail signs of Glider bot is that it will close trade windows as soon as they are opened, so I expected this to happen but to my pleasent surprise it did not, there was a pause of maybe 10 seconds, the trade was accepted and I got ‘THX” from him! – I nearly fell off my mount! I replied ‘NP’ and rode off in to the distance.

So it almost appears as he was not botting in this area, although on mobs of that level and with no food or bandages it will be slooooow. I’ll check on him later if I get chance, there is no need for him to move much now, 55 to 60 is easily attainable in this area!

Wednesday – Don is back!

Day 25

Well I’m glad to say Don is back! I was getting worried – it was about 4:00pm today when I noticed him back, he is level 55 still though.
I  was intending putting an extra 30 days game time on the account today but then I  realised I had forgotton about the 10 days trial period you get with the ‘trial’ account. So I don’t have to rush out straight away and do it!

Tuesday – No sign of Don….

Day 24

Well I’ve checked in a few times today and not seen Don logged in at all. I’ll have to add a gamecard to the account in the morning as the 30 days free credit expired this evening!

Monday

Day 23

I checked on Don this morning and he was at level 54. Just checked now before going to bed and he is 55. So steady but slow progress over the past couple of days.

It looks like I will have to add more game time tomorrow, I can’t say I am at all pleased with that. When I originally embarked upon this ‘project’ I assumed 30 days would be long enough. Oh well……

Sunday – slow day

Day 22

Well not much progress today. I’ve checked in on one of my other accounts and Don is level 53, seems to have been 53 all day!?

I know when I was gliding in the 50’s I was usually able to get up a level each day by doing an hour or so in a morning and then maybe 5 hours in an evening. It’s all about finding the right level mob’s to grind on and making sure you don’t get killed by them, or the opposite faction

Saturday

Day 21

I checked on Don this morning, level 51 still about 9:00am, about 12:00pm and he is up to 52 now. He seems to have moved away from Tanaris and back to STV. There must have been something about Tanaris he did not like, he spent maybe 1 or 2 levels there max.

I did manage to find him in Tanaris, I know that area pretty well, having spent a fair amount of time leveling with Glider around those parts. I observed him for maybe 30 mins and there is no doubt about it he is using a bot, despite what gamepal.com say.

I’ve got to make a decision in 2 days if I add a gamecard to this account. My free 30 days are up on Tuesday! so it’s 30 days since I placed the order with gamepal.com

Friday – Don hits the BIG 50 [Updated 11:00pm]

Day 20

I checked in on Don this morning before stepping out the house to work and what do you know Don has hit the BIG 50. So only 10 levels to go to 60, obviously these are the hardest 10, requiring the most XP, so I am not holding by breath for it to be finished anytime soon.

Anyway, lets hope things move forwards at a steady pace now…..

[Update 11:00pm. Just checked in on Don and he is level 51 now, to exactly a lot of progress in a day but it's moving in the right direction.]

Thursday – Don is back!

Day 19

Late update today I am afraid, been busy with real life stuff!
I checked in this morning and spotted Don logged in – a nice surprise, still in STV though, level 48. Oh well I was relieved to see he was back on after his  almost 2 day rest

I checked at about 6:00pm and to my surprise and relief he has moved locations to the popular grinding location of Tanaris!

I checked again just now, 10:45pm and woopeee, he is level 49. I also checked in on the gamepal.com ‘control panel’ and noticed he has been updating his progress some more, which I guess is good.

Gamepal have however removed the ability for customers to communicate with the leveler, if you follow the link to this now it just takes you to a blank page.

Wednesday – Extended server maintenance?! [Updated 4:00pm]

Day 18

Well no sign of Don my powerleveler at all yesterday. I checked the account email address to see if Blizzard had sent me a nice email telling my account was banned but nothing.

Oh well, not much point Don coming on today before 11am as it is the much awaited server maintenance day in Europe. Today we have an extended one too! 3am until 11am? Just what do Blizzard do with all the servers for that amount of time? I mean file servers, web servers, huuuge databases, they don’t need to be taken down for 6+ hours each week? Does anybody reading this actually know what Blizzard do on this day?

I assume the servers run on Windows 2003 server, so ok they may apply some patches when microsoft release them but that certainly does not take 6 hours. I’m wondering if they have some ‘odd’ in-house database that runs on the servers which needs some kind of compacting or, or something! Who knows.

[Update 4:00pm. Well not a sign of my powerleveler now for over 1 full day. I logged in to my control panel on the gamepal.com website and the messages section shows:-

February 12, 2007, 15:40    Powerleveling Status – Authorizing – We are awaiting additional information for ID Verification; Check Your Registered Email Address.
February 12, 2007, 16:18    Powerleveling Status – Queue – Your order has been queued for processing.
February 14, 2007, 15:21    Powerleveler Assigned – Your order will begin within 1-24 hours
February 25, 2007, 16:34    Message from Powerleveler: lv23, thx
February 26, 2007, 13:23    Message from Powerleveler: 28.7
March 2, 2007, 12:48    Powerleveling Status – Your character is now level 40.5
March 3, 2007, 12:47    Powerleveling Status – Your character is now level 42.4
March 4, 2007, 09:08    Powerleveling Status – Your character is now level 44.6
March 5, 2007, 10:00    Powerleveling Status – Your character is now level 46.1

So, no action since March the 5th, that about ties in with when I last saw him on too, although I think I saw him logged in for a short time at level 47. Has he gone on holiday, sick, computer broke? Hmmmm……

Tuesday [Updated 11:55pm]

Day 17

I checked last night and Don was level 47, I attempted to find him again last night about 11:30pm but could not track him down. I do wish there was some better way to find players without having to add them to a group?! After all STV is a big area to wander round looking for somebody.

I had some fun killing a few Alliance players though – oh and being killed myself!

Some other news of note is that we reached level 60 on our glided character yesterday! I started this power leveling experiment as I thought I would never reach level 60, I signed up when out character was about level 45. So in the time Don has gone from 1 to 47, we have done 45 to 60, do the sums

I checked this morning at 8am and no sign of Don, just checked now at 10:45am and he is still not signed in. Anyway I have to go out to do some jobs now, so more news when I have it folks.

[Update 3.00pm. Well I've been in and out a few times over the course of the day, each time I logged in and checked to see if Don had made an appearance, sadly he has not. Maybe he is gathering some rested XP before a big push to 60 ]

[Update 11:55pm. Well very dissapointing today, not seen Don logged in for 24 hours now!]